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This update feels like a victory of statecraft and a failure of law. As great as it was to hang out with the Nams, I also felt real bad about this direction. Craptacular! posted:Investing into Ala Mhigo's infrastructure not only helps give Ala Mhigo some much needed foundation to establish relations, it gives Nanamo cover to say that Ul'dah is getting something from the exchange, but it also means Lolorito sees many of the refugees living on the streets no longer needing to be sheltered in Ul'dah and the status quo becomes more sustainable. Fewer mouths seeking nourishment makes it less offensive for him to be opulently wealthy.
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May 20, 2023 18:50
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Try and flex some leverage, maybe. Doesn't really seem like we succeeded; he got to be involved in the business he wanted to be involved in. Maybe we succeeded in preventing him from having total control but that isn't much of a victory.
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May 20, 2023 18:52
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Hellioning posted:Try and flex some leverage, maybe. Doesn't really seem like we succeeded; he got to be involved in the business he wanted to be involved in. Maybe we succeeded in preventing him from having total control but that isn't much of a victory. I call getting people both food and stable lives so that Ala Mhigo doesn't immedietly collapse like can easily happen after a revolution a victory myself regardless of having to work with a guy I personally and morally hate but I'm built different. Yeah it tastes like ash in my mouth but I'll happily swallow it all.
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May 20, 2023 18:54
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I still find myself galled by how out-of-character Godbert is in that MSQ segment. I'm honestly still not entirely sure that that was the real deal, given that he was wearing long pants.
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May 20, 2023 18:55
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I think the thing about Lolorito and Nanamo is largely that Lolorito values his personal power above all else, and right now his wealth makes him, arguably, the most powerful individual in Ul'dah. This means he has a great interest in maintaining the status quo. When Nanamo wanted to overturn all of that and do away with that system of government, she was a threat that needed to be handled. Now that she's willing to play by the rules, though, he doesn't have a problem with her. He's fine with an opponent in the game, but he won't tolerate somebody trying to flip the board.
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May 20, 2023 18:56
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Like Clockwork posted:Add me to the chorus of people who hate this chunk of the msq. It's not the worst, and it's not one of the parts I have written essays over, but I just don't think it's well-written overall. where Doma Castle tried to pay off like eight distinct plot threads simultaneously, this bit tries to tie up a whole bunch of loose ends simultaneously. and the most prominent one of which, the guy who's been set up as a major threat from within that MUST be handled seriously since the pre-Heavensward patch, gets the tie-up "welp never mind that plot he's willing to play nice now and you agree with that proposal without question because it's time for the next story." it is one of the things I find annoying going back and looking at the banquet. Alphinaud is horrified at how much he has made worse through his failure! and then it turns out nvm lol, the sultana's fine, Raubahn's mostly fine, all your friends except Minfilia were fine, and the guy who orchestrated it all gets away with a 'soz lol alls well that ends well.' they set up a grand shake-up of the setting, and between technical and narrative limitations, walked all of it back as soon as it might have become inconvenient.
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May 20, 2023 19:02
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Is it a walk-back if it was never intended to be that? Like, given the dev cycle, Heavensward would have had to already be fully written and in active development well before the banquet, so the banquet would have happened with the team having already known for ages that none of it was going to stick.
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May 20, 2023 19:10
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:where Doma Castle tried to pay off like eight distinct plot threads simultaneously, this bit tries to tie up a whole bunch of loose ends simultaneously. and the most prominent one of which, the guy who's been set up as a major threat from within that MUST be handled seriously since the pre-Heavensward patch, gets the tie-up "welp never mind that plot he's willing to play nice now and you agree with that proposal without question because it's time for the next story." Again I don't think they've really walked it back. Even at the banquet he basically sets it up to get the mastermind and real threat to him gets got. Even at the time when it was new content and we were waiting for HW to come out it was pretty obvious to people playing that the scions would be returning, maybe with some new bumps and bruises from the last time you see them in those cutscenes. Than and YSh go out with a mysterious woosh following the fake out which, had it been real, would have been a hilariously unceremoniously and pointless way for the characters to die. The last you see of Yda and Papalymo are them doing a super lb3 Dual Tech and wiping out an entire squad of guards as they both shout "There's no way we're letting this end here". Just narratively speaking there's...not much more they could have gone that wasn't exactly where it ended up without just saying "Yeah all those cliffhangers and their tone and teases were bullshit they just died". These were not walk backs, this was the story setting up "Ooh see how the managed to get out...in the future because now you have more urgent issues to deal with" and then doing exactly that. The shock and betrayal of the Braves still works utterly humble Alphinaud for thinking he understood the world so much better than everyone else and could handle running the show more than anyone else even if no scion died because of it.
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May 20, 2023 19:11
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Regarding Lolorito's character, consider that both Gaius and Zenos would utterly despise him.
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May 20, 2023 19:22
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Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:where Doma Castle tried to pay off like eight distinct plot threads simultaneously, this bit tries to tie up a whole bunch of loose ends simultaneously. and the most prominent one of which, the guy who's been set up as a major threat from within that MUST be handled seriously since the pre-Heavensward patch, gets the tie-up "welp never mind that plot he's willing to play nice now and you agree with that proposal without question because it's time for the next story."
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May 20, 2023 19:23
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I do think that 2.5 was bad in retrospective, but mostly because it gave certain people expectations the game was gonna go full Game of Thrones on every expansion and that's absolutely not the tone the game ended up at. As I heard someone say once, killing off characters in a story is a delicate balance between "the emotional and plot impact of the character's death" and "the possibilities and developments the character could have" and usually the second wins, that's why it's the wise mentors that die the most. I won't comment much on this update's plot, in the end it's basically realpolitiks except in a fantasy world. Nanamo does deserve a free haymaker into Lolorito's face though.
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May 20, 2023 19:24
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I don't really feel like I have much to contribute to the discussion on Lolorito, since I was largely fine with how it played out. Ever since we started fighting people like Thordan and Nidhogg and Zenos, it always felt to me like "Lolorito is a problem, but he's not a WoL problem, Ul'dah has to solve that on its own and I have to trust Nanamo knows what she's doing now". I will say I picked the Saltery right away based on the idea that salt was an extremely valuable commodity in pre-industrial times (perhaps mistaken? I don't actually know for sure, I just know a lot of Medieval simulator-type games I play treat salt as valuable). Godbert's line definitely didn't sit well with me, but it probably is an at least accurate representation of what an upper-class guy who'd made his own fortune while in a position of privilege would think.
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May 20, 2023 19:25
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Salt was, indeed, quite valuable historically, as its a reliable source of preserving food (important when you don't have fridges), kinda tasty as a spice, and has a variety of other potential uses.
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May 20, 2023 19:26
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DanielCross posted:Is it a walk-back if it was never intended to be that? Like, given the dev cycle, Heavensward would have had to already be fully written and in active development well before the banquet, so the banquet would have happened with the team having already known for ages that none of it was going to stick. and you notice that we didn't meaningfully interact with the Ul'Dah plot again until post-Thordan. A lot of space was set up to play with Lolorito as a concept, in the same way OG praetorium sets up that Nero and his wrist gizmo are going to be a major hostile players going forward... concluding with a 'welp never mind' once they realized they didn't have anywhere interesting to take it. it happens, and just leaving it unaddressed would have been more unsatisfying, but this update is the writers giving up on his or the 'man, the poor sure are getting hosed over in Ul'Dah!' stories ever going anywhere. the banquet was ultimately a victimless crime, because minfilia was a text-to-speech for the script and nobody liked adeleji. the end, no moral.
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May 20, 2023 19:33
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Khizan posted:I think the thing about Lolorito and Nanamo is largely that Lolorito values his personal power above all else, and right now his wealth makes him, arguably, the most powerful individual in Ul'dah. This means he has a great interest in maintaining the status quo. When Nanamo wanted to overturn all of that and do away with that system of government, she was a threat that needed to be handled. Now that she's willing to play by the rules, though, he doesn't have a problem with her. He's fine with an opponent in the game, but he won't tolerate somebody trying to flip the board. Is he an ultra-capitalist making his fortune on the backs of his own people? But he's handing out loans and gifts to serve the cause of freedom on the other side of the world, and has been for years. Does he value his own power over all else, being willing to kill to serve his agenda? But he gave half of it away almost offhand, on a ploy that definitely wasn't going to get Kheris to trust him.
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May 20, 2023 19:35
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I think any funding of resistance to Garlemald is a forward thinking investment to the man.
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May 20, 2023 19:37
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Garlemald would take his stuff. His stuff is his stuff, they have to pay for that!  I think overall Lolorito is fairly consistently a self-centered bastard who knows where his bread is buttered but also doesn't show up nearly enough to actually make that obvious in the moment. This mostly just makes the fact that he never takes the L overall worse.
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May 20, 2023 19:56
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Valentin posted:this is slightly askew to the question of how the character is written and the way StB and patches handle him, but for me a lot of the stuff involving lolorito feels like ultimately a concession to the unchanging nature of the MMO world. you can get away with a lot of stuff when there's a statue of you in a key non-instanced MSQ zone and countless random npc lines in ul'dah that hinge on your existence and you're in the CUL quests etc. I agree. I feel like there's no real way for us to properly address Lolorito as an antagonist when every expansion has us moving on to newer areas, so we can't just have him continue to be the way he was portrayed in ARR and leave him unchecked. So he has to be reined in somewhat to be more along the lines of Lawful Evil/Neutral Evil. The devil you can trust and all that.
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May 20, 2023 20:06
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ZZT the Fifth posted:I still find myself galled by how out-of-character Godbert is in that MSQ segment. I'm honestly still not entirely sure that that was the real deal, given that he was wearing long pants. He had a point though that the underclass would side with the Monetarist if all they had to do was take stance of, "at least we're investing in our own city instead of sending it far away." It's kind of like how every time the UK faces financial gloom there are people quick to mention the estimated dollar value of the Crown's huge estates and diamond toilets that only a privileged bloodline get to enjoy. As a member of the monetarist himself he can't just bluntly point out that they can easily upend the Sultanate since it's kind of a threat, so peppering it in philosophical goodwill works even if you don't like the philosophy. (I don't, I believe that people want to be accomplished or remembered for something in case they're gone tomorrow and just being coddled and comforted to a grave where nobody will remember who you are is not satisfying.) We DID just talk about how the Syndicate likely killed Nanamo's parents, after all. GiantRockFromSpace posted:I do think that 2.5 was bad in retrospective, but mostly because it gave certain people expectations the game was gonna go full Game of Thrones on every expansion and that's absolutely not the tone the game ended up at. I was definitely "certain people". And to be fair the end of Baelsar's Wall delivers the most grim deaths yet. (Spoilers for literally everything beyond so don't read this) I certainly didn't expect the game to shift it's body count so heavily on characters with little depth dying in highly telegraphed cutscenes.
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May 20, 2023 20:20
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Like Clockwork posted:Garlemald would take his stuff. His stuff is his stuff, they have to pay for that! Well, he did once. We outplayed him in the cooking job, both by figuring out what he would eat and what he tried to stop us from successfully cooking for Nanamo still cooking it anyways.
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May 20, 2023 20:21
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The game letting Lolorito get away with everything and coming out like he's doing you a favor because everyone is too cowardly to upset the apple cart and their own comfort in Ul'dah is actually a really good critique of morality in capitalistic societies if only the writers actually meant for that.
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May 20, 2023 20:23
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Another thing to remember about Lolorito is that while he has done some bad stuff, a lot of the stuff he gets accused of doing is just straight up false. Look at the opening quests if you start in Ul'dah. He's accused of luring Wystan into a trap (which is true) summoning a golem to kill Wystan and his own men (this was not Lolorito, it was an Ascian) and running a smuggling operation (this was also not true). Roughly 2/3rds of the accusations made against him at the beginning of the game are just not true. This doesn't mean Lolorito isn't a bad guy, but he's hardly the boogeyman he's made out to be early on. And I think a close reading of the post ARR stuff confirms this. Lolorito didn't oppose the Doman refugees coming to Ul'dah because of xenophobia, he did it because he knew that Teledji Adeledji had plans to use them as pawns in the Carteneau Reclamation Act. It was Teledji who also planned the death of the Sultana. Lolorito is a dangerous man who is very willing to hurt people who stand in his way, but if you actually look at what he's done he's just a really savvy but also corrupt politician and capitalist. He very specifically seems to be extremely sorry he made an enemy of you, and since he has done so he has treated you with kid gloves. None of this is to say that Lolorito is benevolent or good in any way, just that he's really never been the guy who really was the source of all of our problems. It's still frustrating to watch him get away with it. I'll hold the rest of my thoughts until a certain point in the future.
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May 20, 2023 20:48
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the game definitely doesn't want you to like lolorito, just like the game lets you have your wol think yuyuhase and laurentius should be killed even though the clearly 'intended' idea is that they should be spared.
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May 20, 2023 20:52
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Just for the sake of clarity, my frustration with this plot development was not so much Lolorito getting away with it all or Uldah losing out on it's chance for major reform, those things I think we're adequately addressed by the narrative. The thing that made me upset is how Lolorito has clearly been softened as part of a concerted effort to make the player OK with him getting away with it all. It feels like a betrayal of the emotional investment I've made in the conflict. As I said, Lolorito was my first real antagonist as an Uldah starter. Before I knew the Empire as more than guys in cutscenes, before I'd ever spoken to an Asian, before I even had to fight a Beast Tribal myself rather than just see them do something in a cinematic, I was experiencing the consequences of Lolorito's greed and corruption. I wanted to do something about him before I wanted to do something about any other problem. I feel that I've been robbed of a confrontation that actually resolves that desire in a way this game normally never fails to provide. Folks have all made excellent points about how this isn't necessarily a huge character shift for him or inconsistent with what's come before, and the plot has done the grunt work of slowly revealing that the Monetarists are not necessarily all bad and that a lot of their worst excesses with at Teledjis feet rather than Loloritos. But those things aren't really the point for me. Win or lose, kill him or accept that I have to live with him, I don't feel like I got the chance to deal with all the feelings he's evoked for me, and while I appreciated Nanamos story here (I'll discuss that more next time when we wrap up the story) it didn't give me resolution by proxy. That's why I described what happened with Lolorito in this expansion as whitewashing. It felt designed more than anything else to make me OK with letting that whole story pass on by, for him to become part of the setting furniture when he most definitely was not before. It's disappointing on a lot of levels, even if it's a disappointing I can ultimately live with.
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May 20, 2023 21:40
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Sanguinia posted:before I'd ever spoken to an Asian Ken, I'll take "typos that made me laugh" for $500.
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May 20, 2023 21:43
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Craptacular! posted:Ken, I'll take "typos that made me laugh" for $500. https://twitter.com/IrvineWelsh/status/1465869723204206599 This is why I don't phonepost 
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May 20, 2023 21:46
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Given the game's previously horrible treatment of refugees, I think I just filed this under "regretfully, the game is a liberal." Beyond that though, I think this is also the game trying to divest itself of going so gung ho on one specific city state. Ul'Dah players have had their city state of choice be at the center of just about all city state related dramas through the entire game up to this point. It sucks that they're cutting this thread as they are instead of actually resolving it, but I can see them wanting to finally wrap it up regarding Ul'Dah.
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May 20, 2023 22:00
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Sanguinia posted:(I'll discuss that more next time when we wrap up the story)
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May 20, 2023 22:01
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dyslexicfaser posted:Can I suggest Kheris do Goldsmith 60-70 here? Is that a spoiler? The plot doesn't really give me time to do anything but keep doing plot at the moment, but you can expect that once the 4.1 MSQ is resolved that I'll be getting into some other things before any other big stories appear.
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May 20, 2023 22:32
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Lol I forgot about Nanamo wearing the visor as a not so subtle dig. But yeah as was brought up, this isn't a big switch for Lolorito and for better or worse the game never intended him to be a real antagonist, just "that rear end in a top hat that complicates things politically for us". Honestly I blame the Heavensward trailer that portrays him as the actual villain of the banquet when that is never what actually happened. Teledji was behind the plot in its entirety, and openly stated his intent to murder Lolorito too in patch 2.4. Everything after Teledji got Adeledji'd was Lolorito scrambling to catch the falling plates and maintain his precious status quo. He succeeded because he was way better at playing the game than Teledji ever was. It's probably true that Lolorito had always meant to be more of a softy than his reputation implied, but that a lot of this characterization got left on the cutting room floor as 1.x exploded and the direction of the game changed. He's still an rear end in a top hat arch-capitalist. He's just more of an older style of rich guy that has a vested interest in stability rather than a Gilded Age or modern day greed elemental. You still don't like the former, but at least it is possible to work with them. It also works in his favor that he's in a position where trying to force a punishment of some sort on him would probably lead to bigger problems that Ul'dah can't afford to just stumble into right now. So Nanamo figures the best course of action is to steer things in a direction where Lolorito's eye for profits serves her aims. I also kind of feel like the second Godbert brought up the word indolence a ton of people immediately checked out of the conversation and chose to interpret it in the most negative light possible, disregarding everything said afterwards. And yeah, understandable. It is an incredibly loaded sentiment buried in the worst parts of Western politics, and definitely the last one that people wanted to hear from a fan favorite character. In the end Nanamo caught what he was trying to say and it ended up being useful advice. The localization could have been handled better to avoid causing so much consternation, though. One thing that has always confused me about this part though is Yuyuhase. Not that he and Laurentius were still skulking about for some reason, but why did he even fuckin go ahead with the Murder Everybody And Summon A Primal plan in the first place. The guy had always been depicted as an amoral mercenary. He sometimes gets a kick out of the pain he inflicts, but it seemed like at the end of the day he was doing it for money and power. What exactly did he stand to gain from the Shinryu plot? It isn't like Ilberd was gonna be able to pay him. There were already plenty of jobs for adventurers without warcriming his way into a renewed conflict with Garlemald. And the Garleans sure as poo poo wouldn't be eager to break bread with a guy who blew up one of their forward bases with a primal. If money is what he was after, as soon as Ilberd said "hey kill all these guys so I can summon a hatred elemental" he could have turned himself in and played state's witness to seek leniency, or he could have just peaced out entirely. Instead he just rolled with it. What the heck. At least Laurentius had the excuse of being a dead ender who felt his life was over and Ilberd was the only person left who would take him. Thundarr fucked around with this message at 23:00 on May 20, 2023 |
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May 20, 2023 22:52
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I figured Ilberd did not let them in on the Primal Ritual part of the plan and that they thought the slaughter was just a way to provoke a war in Ala Mhigo that Yuyu could feasibly profit from
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May 20, 2023 22:55
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Blueberry Pancakes posted:I agree. I feel like there's no real way for us to properly address Lolorito as an antagonist when every expansion has us moving on to newer areas, so we can't just have him continue to be the way he was portrayed in ARR and leave him unchecked. So he has to be reined in somewhat to be more along the lines of Lawful Evil/Neutral Evil. The devil you can trust and all that. Moreso than moving onto newer areas, I think the solution a lot of people wanted or were hooked into with the Ul'dah plot - even historically, as people playing at the time in Heavenward crowed pretty loudly about wanting to return to the Ul'Dah plot, and how the edges of the Bloody Banquet were softened - would require, well, to essentially have a "pre-revolution" and "post-revolution" states for at minimum Ul'dah and at maximum all of Thanalan, and even without taking into account the MMO expac dev cycle of making brand new areas for us to explore, one of the central primary character hubs being divided in that way, let along an entire region of the main story, was pretty technologically unfeasible for the team. There were probably grand plans for this at some point, but, well, where design, narrative, and engineering meet in games is very often a compromise of those plans, it's just not usually so obvious here. Taking the Doylist POV, but Godbert's rationale comes pretty out of character, and I still think that. In pretty much every other scenario, even when Godbert has been 'serious' he's never been the guy who talks about indolence/welfare queens/etc, and I think he could have phrased the rest of his point in a more charitable way and left that on the floor. Obviously this is just my own thoughts talking, but it always felt like they wanted to have some of these points addressed but ran into the "conservation of characters" problem with regards to narrative. In terms of characters on the Ruling Board of Ul'dah that we actually know (and wouldn't immediate react to "who the gently caress are you" upon seeing) who would also espouse this viewpoint, he's pretty much the only one who can serve it up. Since the next best person to offer these views has been, shall we say, divorced from the narrative for some time. Re: Lolorito, it's almost certain that he's a pet character in the narrative, and not seeing him get to take a richly deserved total loss is frustrating, especially given the expectations/intents that were likely dashed in development. Whether or not he's softer than he seems is a bit moot to me, because, like everyone else, I choose to take the interpretation that the WoL being there was Nanamo subtly cueing to Lolorito that he is actively being watched, and should any further funny business tie back to him, the WoL won't hesitate to serve up some Ul'dahn Scalloped Potatoes next time they're at the Bismark. Monathin fucked around with this message at 23:31 on May 20, 2023 |
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May 20, 2023 23:28
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Yeah pretty much any time the WoL gets involved in politics there's the unspoken threat of personal and sudden violence should there be any dirty tricks. That said, the WoL needs to actually see said dirty play, if you just talk a big game but there no evidence, you get to live until you take that first step. Lolorito abuses this to survive, he stays on the straight and narrow where anyone can see him, keeping his dirty dealings to third hand except where said dealings are merely unethical, not illegal. Like with the assassination plot, he let Teledji do all the dirty work while he meddled from the sidelines to swap the deadly poison with Somnus.
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May 21, 2023 00:18
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:I read all the Stormblood revelations less as a reveal he's actually a good person secretly and more as "This guy wants to make sure anyone he can is in his debt so he can pull more strings" like he does in that convo with you and Nanamo. I also think he very much knows he cannot stand against you. So by supporting what the Warrior of Light is doing, there will always be chaos in a different direction there will always be profit to be had.
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May 21, 2023 00:35
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Galaga Galaxian posted:I can't remember, why they heck were they following you instead of catching the next boat to Radz-at-Han or otherwise getting themselves as far away from this mess as possible. I took always took it as neither of them expecting Ilberd to also die at the wall, so now they're kind of stranded, surrounded by people who hate them with nowhere to go. Ilberd was the leader, they were just followers and now don't know what to do on their own.
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May 21, 2023 00:38
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They certainly wrote a scenario where we have to just side-eye the little fucker and accept that he's going to remain a part of Ul'dah's corrupt system.... but yeah, I think a lot of people want to genuinely, actively Do Something about Lolorito, and that's reasonable. I think it adds something interesting to the story that we have to grit our teeth and walk away from him, but maaaaaaan gently caress that guy, y'know?
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May 21, 2023 00:41
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I also am just a fan of there being some things that we can't do.
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May 21, 2023 01:02
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I think my take on Lolorito is: Dude's a problem, and he's smart enough to have learned that he doesn't want to be YOUR personal problem, because you've proven to be 17 kinds of unkillable and prone to reacting with violence. Of course as the thread illustrates many of us still see him as our problem and would cheer if we got to punt him like a football.
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May 21, 2023 01:07
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Yeah the narrative making it crystal clear that we'll never get to punch Lolorito is still a bitter pill. My main also started in Ul'dah so I also had a front row seat to all the bullshit going on in his name.
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May 21, 2023 01:08
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 20:39 |
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No matter how eccentric and funny he may be, Godbert is a gillionaire and therefore not good.
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May 21, 2023 01:20
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